Overseas Sales

This is the largest area that we need to grow as a company in the next 6 months. As viper comes online in the next several months, and given the recent successful glide demonstration, it is incredibly important to hit the ground running here.

Brendan⁠

is familiar and did some work at ZipLine,

Tony⁠

did a few sales through channel partners, and

Nathan⁠

has seen the depths of the process on the US side, but we don’t have anyone who truly excels in this arena. Successfully executing on overseas sales will require a few primary components -

Excellent overseas function - We will have to successfully navigate overseas military customers. This will involve getting a thorough understanding of their bureaucracy, internal politics, cultural norms, and needs. This will take time, and will require significant in-country presence.

DoD, Department of State, Department of commerce authorization. This is a largely separate process, through which we will have to get approvals. This is a missive bureaucracy to work through, and will require significant effort from our end. It also requires significant airworthiness and complaince work, which will put strain on engineering and manufacture and make us implement a lot of process that will harm overall speed and flexibility.

Marketing. This involves a concoction of demonstrating US interest (ex - lots of foreign governments index heavily on SOCOM contracts), demonstrating senior credibility (advisory boards, senior BD folks, big investors, etc), and excellent flight videos. From everything I’ve gathered, US DoD actually cares very little about these things. But for foreign customers, they mean everything. This will lead us to want to exit stealth, spend some cycles on marketing/demos and bring on an advisory board that brings a level of credibility.

Mass. Showing the ability to actually deliver on orders is a game changer.

Each of these will be extremely challenging, but ultimately worthwhile. Our products, which compared to other defense startups are ultra-low cost (we’re actually cost competitive - even on the Ukrainian markets), directly value add and geared towards a kinetic conflict, seem to be exactly what Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Pacific allies are stockpiling. This however, will also likely be a very short lived opportunity. As much as I’d like to say otherwise, there is nothing deeply differentiated about our first round of products. This was intentional, as it allowed us to get to market relatively quickly, but it also means that if we don’t capture it, this opportunity that we are uniquelly well geared for, will almost certainly pass us.

So, starting immediately, I will be looking to hit this space very hard. We’ll have to rapidly build out this team, primarily as relates to point a. I’ll also be spending the cycles to create great video material (likely on a mid-August, early September timeframe), and building out the advisory board. Geopolitical deterioration has also lead me to strongly favor our approach of being aggressive on manufacture - and this will likely be executed depending on the global, customer, and technical state once Viper is reliably flying.

Would like to talk through these dynamics with y’all, and would deeply appreciate the intros of anyone you know who is sharp in the space.

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